


If This Room Was Burning

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: (but no ACTUAL sex), Accidental Drug Use, Cave-In, Dubcon Cuddling, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Negotiation, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 14:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Peggy, Daniel, and Jack are retrieving canisters containing another one of Howard's stolen experiments when they get trapped in a cave in, and one of the canisters is breached. Problem is, Howard was a little less than forthcoming about what exactly was in them...





	If This Room Was Burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



> This... got entirely out of control. Um. Happy Valentines?

The beam of Peggy’s flashlight swept over the stacks of canisters piled haphazardly against the rusting grid holding the rough-poured concrete wall in place. There were a few musty-looking mattresses shoved up against the wall, a handful of foot-lockers and empty C-Ration cans, but it looked like the smugglers had cleared out and left their loot behind once they’d realized that they were being tracked. Or, possibly, once they realized exactly how miserable this hideout was in mid-November. “I think this is it.”

“Unless there’s another mad scientist around here labeling his stuff with the Stark logo,” Daniel said, crutching up alongside Jack, “I’m gonna say that’s a yes. Thank God. Thompson, you got the containment gear?”

Jack jerked his chin toward the entrance, which was cut into the rough stone face of the hillside. “It’s in the car. I wasn’t gonna haul it all over creation looking for those things. You sure there’s nobody in here with us? Local guys weren’t quite sure it was abandoned.”

“No, I just figured a gun battle would spice things up a little,” Daniel said, and rolled his eyes when Jack flicked the beam of his flashlight up toward his face, making him squint. “Yeah, I’m sure. Nothing in the rest of tunnels but moss and dirt and a couple of dead rats. Part of it’s caved in over on the north side. No other way in.”

Peggy stepped closer to the canisters. They were a make Jack didn’t recognize, dark enamel with bright orange rings of what looked like plastic around each end and no obvious way of opening. Not that he was going to try opening them in any case; he’d had way too much experience with Howard Stark’s particular brand of mad science for that. Stark could handle them himself, back at his own fancy private lab, where the only person who’d get blown up if anything went wrong was him. Not Jack, and definitely not Peggy or Daniel.

Fortunately, she stopped far short of the nearest one, leaning over to peer at it, flashlight held high. “We’ll have to do a count, of course, but this looks like all of them. Jack, if you could fetch the gear?”

“What am I, your errand boy?”

“Of course not. SHIELD pays your far too well for that. You are, perhaps, an _aide-de-camp._ Consider it a promotion.”

“I’m not sure I like the implications of that,” Jack grumbled, but he couldn’t put much bite in it, especially when Peggy laughed, clear and bright in the dim, stuffy space. “Okay, okay, I’ll be right back. Try not to blow anything up in the meantime.”

“I’m not so sure _I’m_ the one who needs to be told that,” Peggy said archly, and Daniel huffed out a short laugh, and Jack just barely managed to rein in his fond grin until he was out of sight.

*

They didn’t usually get to come out on this kind of routine job anymore. Peggy and Daniel were busy the endless headache of getting their fledgling spy agency off the ground and Jack was busy with the endless headache of making sure that they didn’t step on too many powerful toes in the process, and for the past six months most of the action he’d seen had been behind a desk or in front of the SASC. The most he’d seen of Peggy and Daniel had been rushed drinks at their favorite late-night watering hole, where he did his damndest to ignore the way they held hands and bumped up against each other when they thought he wasn’t looking; they might be trying to keep their relationship under wraps in the office, but it was obvious enough to anyone who knew them. It didn’t even sting too much, most of the time. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming, and at least they were decent enough not to rub his face in it.

Point was, this kind of thing was pretty much outside their job description these days, but the call had come in from Stark directly. He was still one of their staunchest financial supporters, and he had the--albeit reluctant--ear of plenty of powerful people in Washington, so when he sent word to Peggy that another one of his experiments had gone missing and he sure would like some trusted professionals to retrieve it discreetly, she hadn’t put up too much of a fuss.

Privately, Jack was pretty sure that she and Daniel both just missed being out in the field, but he hadn’t put up too much of a fuss either. He’d missed it too.

More to the point, he missed _them_ , the both of them. So here he was, slipping and sliding down the side of an abandoned mine in upstate New York in half-frozen mud to the borrowed agency car he definitely didn’t remember parking so far away. Halfway down the hillside, a chilly rain started dribbling down, and he realized belatedly that he’d left his slicker in the mine.

Great. Hopefully the water wouldn’t damage the containment bags, or they'd really be in real trouble.

The face of the hillside looked even drearier in the rain than it had when they’d driven up, and that was saying something. It was bare of trees and without sod to keep the earth in place it looked like nothing so much as a melting chocolate ice cream cone, rivulets of muddy water cutting trails down its side and emptying into the soggy grass at its base. It was no wonder their erstwhile smugglers had abandoned it. Jail was probably more comfortable.

He managed to make it inside before the downpour really started, but his shirt was still beginning to wilt against his body by the time he got back to the smugglers’ lair, where Peggy and Daniel had already gotten the canisters separated out into neat rows.

At least it didn’t look like any of the things had been breached. He let the pile of bags drop onto the floor in a soft, heavy _thwump_ , pushed his wet hair out of his eyes, and said, “I sure as hell hope you guys aren’t planning on hauling all of this out by ourselves.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jack,” Peggy said brightly. “That’s what junior agents are for. I’ll put a call in to the field office on the radio once we’ve got all this lot bagged up. No need for awkward questions about what Stark technology is doing all the way out here. Howard will meet us there; I’ve just spoken to him this morning.”

“Great,” Jack muttered, eyeing the canisters. There were at least two dozen of them, each one as long as his arm and several times as thick around. They looked heavy, and he wasn’t looking forward to handling any kind of experimental substance that came out of Stark labs, especially since Howard Stark had been cagey as hell about what the stuff was supposed to do.

Daniel clapped him on the shoulder with one warm hand as he passed. “Come on, Jack. Sooner we get started, sooner we can get out of here.”

“You’re all sunshine and rainbows.” He followed Daniel over to the waiting canisters, accepted the pair of thick gloves that Peggy handed him. By the weight, they were lined in lead. That wasn’t worrying or anything. “Did you ever get anything else out of Stark about what’s in these?”

“Howard was less than forthcoming,” Peggy said, pulling on her own gloves and kneeling beside him, bracing the flashlight against her thigh so they could see what they were doing. There was some light filtering in through the long corridor to the outside, but it wasn’t much. “He did say it shouldn’t be fatal, but direct contact is to be avoided if at all possible.”

“Great. So for all we know it could melt our faces off if we touch it.”

“I believe that would fall under the heading of ‘fatal’.”

“Much as I hate to say it, I’m with Thompson on this one.” Daniel’s gloved hands were steady and surprisingly deft as he pulled a canister to him and wrapped it in the thick cloth, smoothing the edges down to seal them. “Somebody wanted them enough to steal them.”

“But not to guard them properly,” Peggy said, following his lead somewhat more clumsily. Jack, too, was finding it hard to keep a grip on things. The thick gloves made it hard to maneuver, and Daniel made it look easier than it was. “They may have just gambled that any Stark tech would be worth a fortune to the right buyer, regardless of what it actually did.”

“They’re not wrong,” Jack muttered. The canister he was holding slipped out of his fingers and rolled away across the grimy concrete floor, fetching up against the rusty leg of one of the cots shoved against the wall. “Aw, son of a bi--gun.”

Peggy made a soft, amused noise under her breath, but when he glared over at her, her expression was smoothly innocent. She set the wrapped canister she was holding aside and reached for another one. Jack pointed at her. “Don’t start.”

“I would never,” she said, and this time Daniel was the one who chuckled quietly.

God, he really had missed the two of them.

They worked in comfortable silence for a while, the soft clink of canisters as they shifted and the sound of two other sets of breathing over the downpour outside. Eventually, Daniel set down the canister he’d just wrapped and pulled himself upright on his crutch, twisting his spine with an audible _crack_ that made Jack wince. Figured that being down on the cold floor was harder on him than Jack or Peggy. He still wasn’t entirely sure about the extent of Daniel’s injury--Daniel deflected any questions on the topic with stubbornly mild non-answers, and Jack had given up on asking--but he knew enough about lingering wounds to guess at how hard the damp had to be on him.

Daniel wouldn’t thank him for bringing that up, though, and he was capable of tact when he wanted to be. He pulled himself upright as well, wincing when his long-healed ribs twinged. Daniel wasn’t the only one suffering in this miserable weather. “Sounds like it’s really coming down out there.”

“Hopefully the road doesn’t wash out,” Daniel agreed, twisting the other way. The motion pulled his damp shirt tight across the muscular curve of his shoulders, the dim gray light coming in from the tunnel entrance cutting his profile as sharp as a silhouette portrait. “If we end up stuck here for the night, I’m expecting hazard pay.”

“You can take that up with your director,” Peggy said from the floor, sounding amused.

“I don’t know about that, I hear she’s a real battle-axe. Anyway, what are you talking about?” Jack gestured at the miserable-looking mattresses and battered crates. “We got all the amenities right here. Might even be some C-Rations left, if the rust and the rats haven’t gotten to ‘em.”

“You’re a real comedian,” Daniel said dryly. “Alright, let’s get the rest of this over with, I don’t want to…” He trailed off suddenly, head tilted to one side. “What is that?”

“What is _what?_ ” Jack asked, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he heard it too. A low, almost subsonic rumble, one that he could feel in his bones with a tooth-gritting shudder. The air seemed to press in on him, still and close, and then Peggy swore fiercely and foully, surging to her feet. A sudden shower of wet earth fell across Jack’s shoulders and head, cold and gritty where it found its way down the back of his collar, and oh. Oh _shit._

 _Landslide_ , he thought with a thick, dull kind of horror, but he was still standing there, frozen and stupid with shock, when the world caved in around him and everything went dark.

*

He wasn’t sure if he’d blacked out or not, but the next thing he was aware of was a darkness so absolute that it was like staring into the void; he might as well have been a pair of eyeballs floating in the endless black. The floor was cold and gritty beneath him, and something was pressed up against his left side.

Not something. Some _one_ , a warm sprawl of limbs and a pointy joint--elbow or knee, he couldn’t tell which--jabbing him painfully in the midsection. It had to be Daniel; Peggy hadn’t been close enough. Jack reached out, patting up a gritty section of fabric until he found bare skin. Rough stubble, and then warm slack lips. He had just long enough for a jolt of real fear to stab through him at the lack of movement, and then clumsy fingers batted him away.

“What the hell?” Daniel groaned, sounding dazed. “Thompson?” And then, with sudden sharpness, “Peggy? Peggy, are you—”

“I’m here,” Peggy said from just out of arm’s reach, and Jack let out a slow, relieved sigh. “I--ah!”

“What?” Jack said, and then a beam of bright white light swept across his face, blinding him.

He flinched backward, and Peggy turned the flashlight hastily away. “Sorry, sorry. I wasn’t sure it was still working.”

“It’s working,” Jack said, pulling himself gingerly upright. His entire body felt battered and sore, but nothing seemed to be broken.

On his left, Daniel twisted to reach for his crutch, then pulled himself upright with a groan. “What the hell happened?”

“Well,” Peggy said. “At first glance, I’m going to guess it was a cave-in.”

“You think?” Jack said. The rusted metal holding up the packed stone walls had peeled away in twisted strips, letting loose a fall of earth that blocked the entrance and half of the room. The rest of it seemed to be holding, at least for now. “Jesus. How long is it going to take to dig out of here?”

“That depends entirely on whether…” Peggy spun slowly in place, casting the beam of her flashlight across the dirty floor. The canisters were scattered, but their gear seemed to be intact and unburied, the light glinting on the dull green carapace of Jack’s handheld walkie-talkie, which had rolled under one of the cots but seemed otherwise undamaged. “Oh, good. We still have a radio. The field office ought to be able to make it here in twenty minutes. Thirty, if they have to load up gear.”

“Assuming we can get signal through all that,” Jack pointed out.

“If not,” Peggy said tartly, “I suppose we can start digging. We ought to have plenty of air, at least.”

“Small blessings,” Daniel said, but she was right. The space they were trapped in felt claustrophobically small with the darkness pressing in around the glow of Peggy's flashlight, but the ceilings were high and there was plenty of clear space; even if there was no air coming in from outside, they’d have at least a day before oxygen became a serious concern.

Small blessings, indeed. It said something about Jack’s life that this wasn’t the worst situation he’d found himself in with the two of them; at this point, it might not even be in the top ten.

That was when he heard the hissing noise.

It was soft, sibilant, like an ill-tuned furnace of a cracked gas pipe, the sound of pressure escaping. Easy to miss unless everything else was silent.

The god-damned canisters. Peggy started toward the radio, and Jack flung up his arm, blocking her so abruptly that she ran into him. “What on earth? Jack—”

“I think one of ‘em’s broken,” he said. Peggy looked up at him, then tilted her head; even in the dim light, he could see when she heard the sound too, the sudden paleness of her face.

Daniel swore softly under his breath. “Which one is it? If we can bury it—”

“--we might be able to seal the breach,” Peggy finished. “Are there any of the containment sacks left? We could—there it is.”

She pointed, but Jack had already seen it. One of the canisters--one of the few that hadn’t been wrapped up yet, of course--was spinning lazily across the floor, propelled by a narrow stream of reddish dust emitting from a crack near one end. The three of them stumbled back as one, but before they could do anything else, the hissing noise grew louder. The canister spun around with sudden violence and exploded into a fog of reddish dust.

He felt it land on his skin, a fall of powder that was almost too soft to feel, and flinched belatedly, yanking his shirt up over his nose. Too late, though; he was coughing like he’d breathed in smoke, and Peggy and Daniel were doing the same. When he blinked his leaking eyes, wiping at them with the back of his hand, the both of them were covered in the stuff from head to toe. It looked like they’d been powdered in rouge by a very enthusiastic giant; in any other circumstances at all, it would have been a riot.

There was a long, frozen moment, and then Peggy shook her head sharply, a shower of red dust falling from her dark curls, and said, “I am going to _murder_ Howard.”

“It doesn’t seem to be doing anything,” Daniel said cautiously, wiping at his face and tugging at his shirt, which was damp enough that the stuff just seemed to be caking on it.

“Yet,” Jack added darkly. “I think we better try and call Stark first, though. No use in them digging us out if we’re just gonna melt into puddles of radioactive goo in the meantime.”

“Your optimism knows no bounds,” Peggy said dryly, and went to retrieve the radio.

Jack glanced at Daniel, ready to exchange a commiserating look, but fetched up against the expression of fond exasperation on his face, a soft unguarded look. It was a very private kind of expression, Jack thought with something that wasn’t quite irritation, tugging at his shirt and wiping at his face even though it seemed like it wasn’t doing much other than smearing the stuff around. It felt like his skin was prickling wherever he’d been exposed. It wasn’t exactly an itch, more of a weird, feverish sensitivity, and he wasn’t completely sure he wasn’t imagining it.

He hoped like hell he was imagining it.

It took the better part of five minutes for Peggy to get a signal, and then there were a few minutes of tiresome back and forth with the junior agent who’d picked up before a rescue expedition was arranged, and then, finally, someone went and fetched Stark and got him on the line.

 _“You okay?”_ he asked immediately, and the sudden anxiety in his voice was enough for Jack to downgrade his plan from shooting the guy to arresting him.

“We’re quite alright,” Peggy said. “But—”

 _“But?”_ Stark interrupted, his voice sharpening.

“...but there may have been a breach in one of the canisters.” She glanced down at the exploded canister, the blast radius of red powder around it on the floor, then said, “I’m sorry, that was inaccurate. One of the canisters has most definitely been breached, and we don’t know the status of the rest of them. Howard, now would be a very good time to tell us what was in them, and what it does. Without all the waffling this time, if you please.”

There was a long, crackling silence, one that went on long enough that Peggy started to reach for the dial again, and then Stark said, with feeling, _“Shit.”_

“That is not precisely encouraging,” Peggy said sharply. “What should we do to counteract it?”

Another crackling silence. _“Who’s in there with you?”_

“Agents Thompson and Sousa.”

 _“Oh, good.”_ Another silence, and then, _“Sorry, I mean, not_ good _, but it could definitely be worse. I’ll whip up an antidote and head out right now with the gumshoes. You oughta rinse off as much as you can. Try not to get any in your mouth. After that…”_ he trailed off.

“Howard,” Peggy said, a note of warning in her tone, when he didn’t continue.

 _“I am really, genuinely sorry about this,”_ Stark said, which was the most worrying thing Jack had heard all day, landslide included. “ _After that, just, uh. Follow your instincts. Skin contact helps, the more, the better. I gotta go.”_

The connection cut out. For a moment, they sat together in silence, staring at the radio, and then Daniel said, “When we get out of here, I’m arresting him, I don’t care how good his contacts at the Committee on Armed Services are.”

“On this particular point, I’m entirely in agreement with you.” Peggy set the radio down. “Help me up, would you? There ought to be some water left in my canteen. We can get it off our hands, at least.”

The canteen turned out to be somewhat less than a quarter of the way full, just barely enough to wet their hands. Daniel splashed some over his cheeks, sloshed a mouthful and then spat it out on the floor, but Jack could still see flecks of the stuff caught in his dark hair, which was beginning to come loose from its pomade in the damp. The shoulders and bodice of Peggy’s dark-colored top were liberally dusted.

Jack tugged at the collar of his shirt, pulling it away from his grimy throat. The cloth felt too hot, constricting where it touched his skin. “Follow your instincts. What the hell was that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing good, I expect,” Peggy said grimly. “Although at least it doesn’t appear to have turned us into slavering murderous beasts quite yet.”

“Speak for yourself.” He tugged at his collar again, then gave up entirely and popped the top button, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t bothered to wear a tie to go hiking around in the backwoods of New York. Even his sturdy broadcloth shirt felt like it was choking him, the inside as abrasive as if it had been coated in bits of fiberglass insulation. He shoved his sleeves up, scratching absently at his wrists. “When I get my hands on Stark, I might have to strangle him. Does it seem hot in here?”

“Now that you mention it, it does.” She tugged at the neckline of her blouse, displaying a brief, tantalizing flash of creamy bosom and the pale satin edge of her brassiere.

“It’s not, though,” Daniel said slowly. He’d been rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, too, but he paused halfway through the second one, leaning on his crutch. “It’s chilly. I was freezing my rear off five minutes ago.”

“Our body heat could be warming the place up?” Jack suggested, without much hope.

“In five minutes?” Daniel gestured at the cavernous ceiling above them with his free hand. “Come on. It’s gotta be a side effect of the drug. I just don’t know what…”

“Oh, bugger,” Peggy said suddenly. There was an unsteadiness in her voice that sounded almost like laughter, shaky and nearly hysterical and entirely unlike her. “I believe I know what this is meant to do. That utter wanker.”

Daniel and Jack exchanged a look, and then Jack said, slowly, “You wanna share with the class?”

Peggy opened her mouth, then shut it. Her cheeks looked flushed, and Jack was pretty sure it wasn’t just the uncertain light. “Well, the good news is that I don’t expect we’re in any real danger of dying.”

“Great,” Jack said. “What’s the bad news?”

“Howard said--oh, this is mortifying. I’m going to kill him.”

“For the love of God, Carter, spit it out already.”

Daniel gave him a look, but Peggy didn’t even seem to notice his impatience. She dragged a hand over her face, and yeah, she was definitely blushing. What the hell did it take to make Margaret Carter, a woman who’d once marched straight into a locker room of half-naked male agents with nary a blink, blush like that, anyway? “This wasn’t something Stark Labs was developing. It was a private project for Howard. He was a bit cagey about it when I asked, but he did say that it had been intended for, ah, personal use.”

“Personal use,” Daniel repeated flatly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Peggy raised her eyebrows, still blushing furiously, and the penny finally dropped. Jack could see the second that Daniel got it as well; his face went entirely blank and then he coughed. “Oh.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Jack said at length. “We hauled ourselves all the way out to the back end of nowhere and got trapped in a cave-in to retrieve a stash of Stark’s _aphrodisiacs_?”

“Which we have now been dosed with,” Daniel interjected.

“That is my current assessment, yes.” Peggy pushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ears with a brisk air that was belied by her flushed cheeks. “I would be delighted to be wrong.”

“But I don’t feel—” he broke off abruptly before he could finish that sentence out loud. “Anything like that. Just hot. And itchy.”

“Same, uh. Same here,” Daniel added.

“He did say the experiment had been a failure. Seemed quite disappointed, in point of fact.”

“So why the hell did he _keep_ it, that’s what I want to know,” Daniel said, sounding annoyed. He was as red as a beet.

“He’s Howard,” Peggy said, as if that was explanation enough. Which, really, it probably was.

“Great,” Jack said, pushing his hands into his hair and spinning on his heel to pace to the far end of the cave, which seemed a hell of a lot smaller than it had just a minute ago. The air felt thick and hot, pressing in on him like a suffocating blanket, and even when he rested his forehead against a still-intact section of cool concrete wall, it didn’t really make him feel any better. He could feel every fold and crease of fabric against his skin, a maddening irritation that made him want to tear at his clothes and skin. He curled his fingers into fists instead. The other two were staring at him, he could tell, but he didn’t turn. “So what the hell do we do now?”

There was another long silence. He could just picture the two of them exchanging glances, Peggy impatient, Daniel worried, and then Peggy said, “Well, we might as well secure the rest of these things. Since we’re already waiting.”

“Smart,” Daniel said. “I still think our best bet is to try and bury them. What do you think, Thompson?”

Jack let out his breath in a sigh, and finally turned, yanking an easygoing smile onto his face. “Yeah. Sounds like a plan.”

*

Burying them turned out to be a much bigger headache than he’d been expecting. The cave-in was mostly on the entry side, where their rescue crew--whenever the hell they got there--would need to dig through, and the far side was hard-packed dirt and concrete that none of them wanted to mess with too much, lest they cause another cave-in. They ended up hauling the canisters over--gingerly, like they were handling two dozen very small nuclear warheads--and then fashioning a tarp of sorts out of Jack’s rain slicker to haul over the dirt. It was hot, messy work, and it didn’t help that every inch of Jack felt as raw and sore as if he’d been dipped in acid. His shirt, already soaked through from his jaunt in the rain, was plastered to his body and every shift of cloth felt like sandpaper against his skin. He could see the same discomfort in the way Peggy and Daniel kept twitching like irritated cats, in the tight line of Peggy’s mouth and the way Daniel rubbed at his face and arms like the feeling was something he could just knead away.

It didn’t help that every sound seemed magnified in the stuffy silence. He kept imagining that he heard the hissing noise of another breach, but all the other canisters proved to be--at least superficially--intact. After what felt like an age, they managed to get them all packed in dirt, laid out as neatly as a honeycomb so that the containment crew could get to them easily.

Jack sat back on his heels and rolled his shoulders, but that did nothing to abate the ache. It seemed to cut right through him, a deep soreness that wasn’t tension or a pulled muscle. It was like his entire body was one big bruise, and now that he had nothing to focus on, it seemed to be getting worse with every breath.

At this point, he’d have taken mindless animal lust over this, humiliating as that would have been. Trust Stark to come up with an experimental aphrodisiac that did nothing but cause its subjects excruciating pain. Fucking typical.

To his left, Peggy was standing with a soft hiss. When Jack glanced at her, her face was wan and drenched with sweat, lit from below by the flashlight that Daniel had wedged up against the one intact bed frame. Her dark hair straggled against her forehead.

“You okay?” Daniel asked.

“Fine,” she said tightly. “Just--absolutely smashing.”

“They’ll be here soon.”

“I know.”

“Half an hour, tops.”

“Plus however long it takes to dig us out,” Jack interjected. He scratched at his arm, then made himself stop before he could dig his fingernails in deep enough to break the skin. It wouldn’t help.

“Yeah, thanks a lot, Jack,” Daniel said. He started to pull himself up, then swayed, bracing one palm against the nearby wall. The heel of his crutch skittered on the floor, and Peggy grabbed for it to steady him, her hand closing over his bare wrist. Jack was looking at him, so he saw the way Daniel stilled at her touch, his shuddering breath, face suddenly blissful in a way that was just a little too close to something entirely different. When he spoke again, it sounded as breathless as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “Oh.”

Peggy let go of him immediately. “Daniel, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think—”

“No, it’s, uh. It’s not that.” He cut a glance at Jack. He might have been blushing; it was hard to tell in the dimness. “Stark was right, is all.”

“What?”

“The, uh, the touching.” He was definitely blushing. “It helps.”

“Really?” Peggy said. And then, very deliberately, she wrapped her fingers around Daniel’s forearm. “Does it cure it entirely, or—”

“No,” Daniel breathed. He was staring at her hand like he’d never seen it before. “It still hurts a lot. But that’s definitely better.”

“I see,” Peggy said thoughtfully. Her face looked softer too, less pained, although Jack didn't think she had noticed that. Her hand traveled higher, toward where his sleeve was rolled up. “What if I—”

Daniel coughed, sudden and loud, his eyes cutting over toward Jack and then dropping just as quickly, his face flushed so dark it almost looked painful. Peggy followed his glance, then quickly dropped her hand.

Jack wished, suddenly and very fiercely, that he could just vanish into thin air.

There was a long, awkward silence during which none of them quite looked at each other. Peggy coughed slightly. Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. The gesture was slow and pained; whatever positive impact Peggy’s touch had had, it clearly didn’t last long.

“This is stupid,” Jack said finally. He could hear the strain in his own voice. “You heard him, he said it helps.”

Peggy and Daniel exchanged a glance, and then Daniel said, “So, what are you suggesting?”

“The obvious thing. No reason for all three of us to be suffering here when you two could just—” he made a vaguely illustrative gesture with both hands. “You know. Get some skin contact.”

They were both looking at him, but Daniel was the one who said, in an oddly gentle tone of voice, “What about you?”

“I can handle it,” Jack said, with more bravado than he felt. He was already about ready to tear his skin off, dig his fingers into the flesh beneath, shred himself down to the bone just to get rid of the awfulness of it--but it wasn’t gonna kill him. He was pretty sure. “I had scarlet fever when I was a kid--can’t worse than that, right? Anyway, they’re gonna get us out of here pretty soon.”

“Jack, we're not going to--” Daniel started, but Peggy interrupted.

“Jack is right about one thing, and one thing only,” she said, standing up and tugging the hem of her shirt out of her dark-colored pants. There was a bright, frustrated impatience in her expression that sent a punch of adrenaline through Jack; he’d seen her wear that same expression while holding a gun on him, while piloting a boat packed with explosives, while standing up before Congress to argue her case for SHIELD. It was an expression that meant she might do just about anything, and haul them all flailing along in her wake. “It is entirely stupid to sit here suffering stoically when we have another option. I propose we _all_ take that other option.”

Then she pulled her blouse up and yanked it off in a single smooth motion, letting it drop on the grimy floor behind her.

Jack stared, jaw half open, and before he could get his brain back in gear to say something she was unbuckling her belt too, shoving her loose pants down and stepping out of them without bothering to untie her shoes, leaving her in nothing but blue satin undergarments and muddy men’s work boots. In the dim, shadowed glow of the flashlight, she seemed like an apparition made flesh, all sleek curves and solid muscle, a fine sheen of sweat gleaming on her pale skin.

For a moment, it was like some private guilty fantasy had slipped out of his dreams and into the waking world, and then Peggy folded her arms with that same impatient air, not the least bit self-conscious and looked at Daniel. “Well? We did discuss it."

Daniel did look self-conscious as hell; what he didn’t look was the least bit surprised. He shot Jack a look that was impossible to interpret, then said, “Really? _Now_?”

“What better time?”

“I can think of a lot of better times,” Daniel muttered, but he sank down onto the rickety-looking bed nonetheless, sliding his arm out of the crutch, and pulled his sweater off over his head. He had on an undershirt beneath it, white cotton so soaked that it was nearly see-through. Jack swallowed, a dry click in the back of his throat, as Daniel hesitated fractionally, then tugged his shirt loose from his pants and pulled that off, too.

This was a strong contender for the worst idea he had ever had in his life, and that was a hell of a bar to clear.

Bare-chested, Daniel hesitated, then thumped the heel of his hand against his thigh. “I’ll leave these on. Easier with the—”

“Of course,” Peggy said smoothly. “I expect that’ll be contact enough.”

She looked up at Jack, and he coughed, hooked a thumb over his shoulder like there was something there worth pointing at, and said, “So I’ll just, uh.”

Daniel stared at him. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“Never figured you for the self-sacrificing type, is all.”

The hot flash of anger that washed over him all of a sudden was almost a relief. He’d never really been the hotheaded type, but he grabbed onto it with both metaphorical hands. Almost anything would have been better than looking at that mild, teasing expression on Daniel’s face, like this was all just some fantastic joke that Jack wasn’t in on. Shirtless and flushed, his damp hair sticking to his forehead, it was too easy to imagine that look in entirely different circumstances, especially when Peggy dropped onto the mattress next to him, curving her body against his like it fit comfortably there, the pair of them looking like a dream. Like a soap-bubble fantasy that would pop if he so much as blinked. It made him want to break something. “Look, I don’t know what you two think you’re—”

“My God, Jack, you are dense,” Peggy interrupted tartly. Her hand curled around Daniel’s knee, and he dropped his cheek to her shoulder, let out a soft noise that was probably relief but sounded like something entirely different, under the circumstances. “I said all of us, didn’t I? That means you as well. Come here.”

Jack stared at her, then at Daniel, entirely wrong-footed. “What?”

“You heard the lady,” Daniel said, sounding caught between amusement and resignation and something else that Jack was entirely at a loss to read. “Get over here, Jack.”

“Yes,” Peggy said. “I am hot, and itchy, and sore, and entirely fed up with this nonsense. We can all fuss about the details later, but for now, _come here._ ”

Jack shook his head, then took a step closer without quite meaning to. Then another, and another, and suddenly he was right there, the two of them looking up at him. He stopped just in front of the bed, hovering awkwardly like the inexperienced teenager that he damn well definitely wasn’t, and two pairs of hands reached up to pull him down. They moved together as smoothly as a dance, and without quite knowing how it had happened Jack found himself sandwiched between them. Even though his shirt, the sudden press of skin felt like a soothing balm on a burn, and then Peggy reached up to start undoing his shirt with quick and practiced efficiency. Large warm palms--Daniel’s--settled on his sides. The touch wasn’t quite tentative, but there was something careful about it all the same. Jack shuddered all over, tried to swallow the noise that wanted to leave his throat. Quietly, Daniel said, “Is this okay?”

“It’s--yeah.” Peggy tugged his shirt out of his belt and undid the rest of the buttons, and then Daniel let go of him briefly to help her slide it down his arms. His hands lingered on Jack’s shoulders, and Peggy’s slightly cooler fingers tugged on his undershirt, pulling it up so that she could rest her palm on his bare skin. He took a sharp breath, and said, “It’s okay.”

God. He’d had fantasies--too many of them to count--that had started just like this.

Minus the drugs and the damp grimy mattress and the… well, pretty much every part of it other than the press of Daniel’s warm skin and the smell of Peggy’s perfume, her soft hair brushing his neck as she leaned over him. This was just medicinal, he told himself firmly. It was all just because of whatever hells-brew potion that had been in that canister. It wasn’t--they weren’t—

“May I?” Peggy asked, pushing his shirt up farther. Her hand left a stinging trail of heat in its wake, but now it didn’t feel torturous at all. The entire surface of his skin felt prickling and oversensitive in the best way. He could feel Daniel’s soft breaths against his ear, raising the fine hairs on the back of his neck.

His voice was hoarse when he finally managed to speak. “Yeah.”

Daniel’s hand was on him to, sliding up his spine, cloth bunching over his fingers until Jack’s undershirt was rucked up around his armpits, and at that point Jack just gave up and pulled it over his head.

Then they were pressed together, skin to skin, Daniel’s arm wrapped around his back, his chest against Jack’s side. Peggy’s arm slid around him from the other side; from the way it twisted against his skin, he thought she might have caught Daniel’s fingers in hers, but he barely noticed that beneath a wash of relief that was better than morphine.

“Oh, God,” he mumbled. His voice sounded thick, almost drugged, but he had no ability to care at all. Peggy hummed against his shoulder, and Daniel took a shaky breath, a groan catching in the back of his throat.

Right. It wasn’t just him, was it? This was helping them, too. That made it better, somehow. Not _okay_ , but--better.

“Good,” Peggy murmured, her mouth just brushing his skin. He could feel the faint stickiness of lipstick that had nearly worn off. “Good. It feels better, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Daniel breathed. His breath was warm against Jack’s ear, and Jack shuddered at the feel of it, felt an answering shudder roll up Daniel’s spine, translate into Peggy, who slung a bare leg over his thighs, curling against him. Daniel reached out and gripped her knee. “It’s good.”

It occurred to Jack, belatedly, that this was already getting entirely out of hand.

“I should,” he started, pulling back in preparation to slip out from under Peggy’s warm leg. Her arm wrapped tightly around his back.

“You most assuredly should not,” she said without lifting her head. Her voice sounded clearer now, more like herself, which made it doubly strange the way she was still wrapped around him. “Should he, Daniel?”

“Nope,” Daniel said drowsily. “Knock it off, Jack. You can over-think it later.”

“Who said anything about over-thinking?” Jack retorted, but he relaxed into their embrace nonetheless. Daniel’s hand was stroking up and down his spine, the feel of it hypnotic. “Maybe I just prefer a little personal space.”

“Sure,” Daniel said.

Peggy laughed softly. “I assure you, Jack, we’re no threat whatsoever to your virtue.” She paused, then added, still sounding amused, “Not unless you want us to be.”

“Peggy,” Daniel said, tensing slightly. “I don't think now is really...”

"Of course. I'm sorry."

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack lifted his head. Daniel was staring at him from inches away, his lips parted, dark eyes wide. Peggy shifted, her hair sliding over his shoulder like a waterfall of silk, and something like anticipation twisted in Jack’s gut as she took a breath—

From outside, there was a sudden _thudding_ noise, a sudden fall of dirt scattering across the floor from the blocked entrance. Muffled voices, and then the radio crackled on. _“Director Carter? Come in, Carter.”_

And then a burst of static, muffled cursing, and Howard Stark’s voice on the line: _“Hey, Peg, I got this brand new robot that--hey, no, come back with that! Anyway, we should have you out of there in a few minutes! Just don’t--”_

There was another, larger thump, and then the line cut out.

They all looked at each other for a moment. Then, in a mad scramble, they dove for their clothes, hastily tugging them on. Peggy cursed under her breath as she struggled with her blouse, which was inside-out; Jack’s fingers felt slick and clumsy as he buttoned up his shirt. That itching, crawling irritation started up again almost the instant they stopped touching each other, but he barely noticed this time. The indistinct voices were getting closer, the metallic sound of shovels hitting metal, and then a shower of dirt fell across the floor, followed by a gust of cooler, rain-scented air.

He and Daniel were both more or less respectable, shirts buttoned but not tucked in, by the time a soft, percussive burst of air widened the opening suddenly to a man’s height, letting in a stream of thin grayish late-afternoon light, some squat robotic thing that looked a lot like an overgrown Pekingese with a backhoe bucket attached to its face, three vaguely familiar junior agents in rain slickers, and Howard Stark.

There was a sudden tearing noise as Peggy yanked her blouse the rest of the way on. Ripped shoulder seam flapping, she crossed her arms over her chest, drew herself up to her full height, and said, with remarkable aplomb, “Well, it certainly took you long enough.”

“Aw, come on,” Stark said, stooping to pat the little robot on the head. “If it weren’t for Fido here, it would have taken ‘em days to dig you out. You could show a little appreciation for my inventions, Peg.”

“I’ve had quite enough of your _inventions_ for one day. I believe you said something about an antidote?”

“Oh, right!” Stark dug into his pockets, coming up with three stoppered vials, each one containing about a shot-glass worth of ominously glowing blue liquid. “All three of you got hit with it, huh? How did you--”

“I am not discussing this with you right now, Howard,” Peggy said through gritted teeth, glancing at the nearest agent, who was very clearly trying--with mixed results--not to stare at the generous expanse of cleavage exposed by her torn shirt. “When this is all sorted, you and I will be having words. For the moment, you had better hand those over, or I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.”

“That hurts me.”

“Not nearly as much as a broken nose would,” Peggy retorted, and stepped forward to snatch them out of his hand. Her imperious gaze swept over the newcomers, all of whom--other than Stark--quailed beneath it. If she was feeling as shaky and sick as Jack did from the lack of skin contact, there was no sign of it. “Thank you so much for your assistance, gentlemen. You may step outside now. We’ll be out momentarily.”

“Make sure you drink all of it,” Stark said with a broad wink as the other agents slipped past him into the tunnel, and then, when Peggy glared at him, “I’m going, I’m going!”

He followed the agents out the opening, leaving the robot behind. In the long, awkward silence that followed, Daniel muttered, “I’m still gonna arrest him.”

“Perhaps we ought to take the antidote first,” Peggy said briskly. Her cheeks were flaming, and she didn’t quite look Jack in the eye when she pressed one of the vials into his hand, which was okay since he couldn’t quite make himself look her in the eye either. “Right, then, both of you, down the hatch!”

“Yes, mother,” Jack said, and got a sudden, startled smile for it as he tipped the vial to his lips.

The liquid inside was sticky-sweet with an unpleasant chemical edge, and it burned like fire going down, but almost immediately the ache started to abate. It wasn’t as instantaneous a relief as wrapping himself up in Daniel and Peggy’s arms had been, but by the time he could bring himself to look at either of them, the agony had abated to a dull, feverish ache, more like the tail end of the flu than like being set on fire from the inside.

It was over. He was fine. They were all fine, other than the way nobody seemed quite able to meet anybody else’s eyes. Peggy and Daniel shifted closer together, moving like they weren’t even sure they were doing it. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, that comfortable intimacy between them, but here and now, after everything, it prickled at some miserable, lonely part of his heart that had been scabbed over for years now, newly raw and tender.

Great. This was just great. Maybe he ought to take Senator Ackley up on that Washington post after all, at least until the fallout from this smoothed over. Going by the looks of things, that would probably happen by, oh, 1965.

“Are you alright?” Peggy asked softly, and it took Jack a moment to realize that the question had been aimed at him.

“Aces,” he said, injecting all the bright cheer he could into the word.

“Jack,” Daniel started, and Jack could see it all over his flushing face, his awkward expression; could see the shape of an apology he didn’t want to hear forming on Daniel’s lips. He started for the entryway before it could take shape, scrambling up the mound of loose dirt with no regard for what had, at the beginning of the day, been a fairly decent pair of leather shoes. They were beyond ruined anyway, what with one thing and another.

“Come on, we don’t have all day here,” he called behind him, and hopped down onto the firmer dirt on the far side of the mound, striding out through the ranks of awkward-looking field agents like he didn’t have a care in the world.

That was something he had a lot of practice at, after all.

*

He got all of ten yards, ears painfully attuned to the sounds of Peggy and Daniel scrambling out behind him, when he was accosted by Howard Stark. “Agent Thompson, you got a minute?”

“No,” Jack said shortly, heading down the path toward the road. Daniel was behind him; he could hear the sound of his crutch hitting the uneven terrain. He thought Peggy might have stopped to speak to one of the other agents, but he wasn’t about to risk looking back.

“Come on, just five minutes. I won’t even make you come back to the lab, we can talk in my car.” Stark waved a hand at the bottom of the hill, where a cluster of troop transports and town cars were parked haphazardly in the mud at the base of the hill, a sleek red Bentley several yards back in the gravel driveway. “It’s for science. None of the original test subjects, meaning myself and a pair of lovely ladies who--well, that part’s not important right now. Anyway, none of us were exposed for _nearly_ as long before the antidote was administered. The scientific potential here is staggering. Also, the potential economic implications, which of course is in no way my primary concern; what do you say? There’s a fully-stocked wet bar in the Bentley, I’ll fix you a drink. You look like a man who could use one.”

Jack gave him a hard stare. “What I could use is one less harebrained scientist with no goddamn lab security to deal with.”

“Fair enough,” Stark said easily, and looked behind him. “Agent Sousa, how about you? Five minutes, same offer.”

Against his better judgement, Jack turned around in time to see Daniel eye Stark for a moment and then say, very calmly, “I would really like to punch you in the face right now.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Stark said. “Tell you what, I’ll even give you a freebie on this one. Just watch the nose, would you? I’ve been told I have a very distinguished profile.”

“Whoever told you that was having you on,” Peggy said, coming up alongside them with her shotgun slung over her shoulder, muddy blouse plastered to her body in a way that did nothing to detract from her general air of barely-restrained menace. “We’re taking the Bentley back to the city. You can ride with the troop transport.”

“Aw, come on, Peggy—”

“You ought to be grateful that I’m not making them leave you here.”

“I told you to be careful with the canisters!”

“Perhaps if you’d told us what was in the bloody things, we would have been able to take appropriate precautions!”

Stark wrinkled his nose, then said, “Okay, that’s fair. But in my defense—”

“No.” Peggy held up a hand, curtailing the rest of that sentence. “We can discuss your lack of judgement and myriad personal failings at some later date. At the moment, though, all I want is a square meal, a hot bath, and my own bed. I suggest that you hand me the car keys and get out of my way.”

Stark opened his mouth as if he was considering trying to argue, then shrugged and pulled out a set of gleaming keys on a handsome leather fob. “Just be careful with it, will you? Take it easy on the turns, and—”

“Yes, thank you, Howard, I do know how to drive,” Peggy said. “I spent the war outrunning German patrols, if you’ll recall.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Stark muttered. At her glare, he subsided. “Alright, alright, I’m sorry, okay? I’ll see you back at the field office.”

“Not until Monday, you won’t.” Peggy plucked the keys out of his hand and stalked off in the direction of the waiting vehicles, shotgun slung over her shoulder, her stride long and confident.

“Don’t scuff the paint,” Stark yelled after her. Peggy made an astonishingly rude gesture over her shoulder without looking back, and he snorted, glanced between Daniel and Jack, then said, “So, I’m just going to, uh,” and fled, leaving the pair of them alone.

Daniel stared after them, then muttered, “Coward.”

“What else is new?” Jack said. “Better get going or she’s gonna leave without you.”

“I doubt it,” Daniel said. He reached up, rubbed the back of his neck, then said, “Look, Jack—”

“It’s fine,” Jack interrupted.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I can guess. And it’s fine. Seriously.”

Daniel eyed him for a moment. “Really.”

“Yeah, really.” Jack grinned at him. The expression felt as brittle as thin slurry on his face, like one wrong move might crack him into a million pieces, and the knowing way Daniel was looking at him didn’t help. “Look, Sousa, we were all drugged. I’ll forget it ever happened if you will.”

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve been through,” Daniel conceded, with a lopsided smile that made Jack wish, with sudden fierceness, that he could just step forward, take Daniel’s face in his hands, and kiss the amused curve of his mouth.

It wasn’t a new impulse by any means, though, so he just shoved his hands in his pockets and started back down the path, Daniel a few steps behind him. His keys were buried somewhere under the mudslide, but there had to be at least one other car going back to town. He could hitch a ride with a couple of agents, hope like hell that Stark hadn’t spread around what exactly it was that his experimental drugs did, and…

Before he could complete that train of thought, though, a powerful engine roared to life, the lights of the Bentley sweeping over them in the rain and gloom. A tap at the horn, and then Peggy spun the sleek town car toward them in a spray of muddy water and leaned out the window. “This car is a delight. I may never give it back.”

“I wouldn’t,” Daniel said, grinning at her. “Call it hazard pay.”

“I expect my accountant would be very cross with me if I tried it,” she said. “Not to mention Mr. Jarvis. And Howard, I suppose. Shall we?”

“Please,” Daniel said fervently, reaching for the door handle. One of the back door handles, Jack noticed. He was moving a little stiffly; the bucket seats in the front would have been hard for him to climb out of in the best circumstances, which these weren’t. “Jack?”

“What?”

“You coming?”

Jack hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the fleet. “Don’t worry about it. I can catch a ride.”

“You could,” Peggy agreed. “But I wish you would come back with us. I believe a frank discussion between the three of us is long overdue.”

Jack stared at her for a moment. She was smiling, so it didn’t seem like the kind of discussion she had in mind would end up in him getting shoved out the passenger door at highway speeds, but if it wasn’t that...

"So," he said eventually. "What you said earlier, about how you weren't any threat to my virtue..."

"Not unless you want us to be," Peggy repeated, very precisely. "I said that as well."

"I figured we were just gonna forget about it."

“We could do that, if you want to,” Daniel said, and he was wearing that smile again, the one that Jack didn’t quite know how to read. Or maybe, the one he’d been deliberately trying _not_ to read for way too long. He wasn’t an idiot. He was plenty capable of reading the subtext here; he just hadn’t ever expected it to become, well, text. He hadn’t been expecting any of this. “Or you could stop being a pain in the neck and get in the car.”

“Aw, hell with it,” Jack said finally, and reached for the door handle.


End file.
